Kitchens & Bathrooms

Utter A Sound

Sonic Unyon

This is the second full-length from Ontario, Canada’s Kitchens & Bathrooms, and it marks a broadening of the aggressive math-rock found on their previous album, Thousand Yard Stare. Still a brutal and hard-rocking outfit, the band now seems to be equally influenced by the post-punk/new wave of Siouxsie Sioux and Joy Division and is not too unlike the brilliantly sprawling Plan or fellow label mates Chore. The furious “Fetching Farewells” is only one of the several examples of this sound, a great and ever-building track that moves beyond its intricate musical patterns to create a sound of anguished despair and churning senselessness. The unintelligible, strained vocal outbursts owe more than a little to the passion of hardcore, while at other times the band seem more indebted to everything from hard rock to free-form jazz.

More than anything else, Kitchens & Bathrooms play hard and punching music, but there are still several slow and introvert parts in which the music barely dares breathe for fear of making a sound beyond the absolutely necessary. And if the band is both too brave and uncompromising to have much commercial impact, this is worth checking out for anyone who has just about lost faith in the current, often formulaic post-rock scene. Refreshing and vital.

Chris Catania finds that it’s taking longer than he thought to finish Qbadisc mastermind Ned Sublette’s new history of Cuban song – he keeps running to the record store mid-page for his fix. That’s the stuff.